Dow Off 20; NASDAQ at New High
Market Overview
Highlights of Thursday’s market activity, compiled from Times staff and wire reports:
* Blue chip stocks ended 1992 with a whimper, knocked down by sell programs in the last few minutes of thin pre-holiday trading, but NASDAQ stocks capped a dazzling 1992 with a record high close.
* Treasury bond yields inched up in quiet trading, and the 30-year bond yield closed almost exactly at its year-ago level.
* Gold finished unchanged for the day and down 6% on the year.
Stocks
The Dow Jones industrials slumped 19.99 points to 3,301.11 after trading in a narrow range for most of the session.
For the week, the Dow lost 25.13 points, though for the year it still finished up 132.28 points, or 4.2%.
Computerized sell programs at the very end of Thursday’s session caused the biggest market move of the day, pushing the Dow to its session low. It merely added insult to injury for the wounded Dow, which limped through 1992 as many of its key component stocks took beatings.
Bear, Stearns & Co. analyst Jack Solomon this week estimated that the Dow would have closed the year 85 points higher were it not for the severe drop in International Business Machines.
Most broader indexes beat the Dow’s gain for 1992. The broadest of all--the Wilshire 5,000 index--rose 6.2% on the year.
Meanwhile, the undisputed star of Thursday’s session and the year was the NASDAQ market of smaller stocks. The NASDAQ composite index leaped 5.10 points on the day to finish at an all-time high of 676.95, up 90.61 points, or 15.5%, on the year.
Analysts said mixed economic data released early Thursday did not affect trading. The government said factory orders fell in November, while the latest report on initial claims for unemployment showed a large drop.
Volume on the New York Stock Exchange was a light 165.9 million shares, down from 183.9 million Wednesday. Gaining issues outnumbered losers by 1,115 to 678.
Many traders say the market will take its cue in January from the government’s report on December unemployment. That report is due next Friday, and will either cement expectations for faster economic growth in 1993, or raise new questions about growth.
Among the market highlights:
* Losers among the blue chips included General Electric, down 1 1/8 to 85 1/2; American Telephone & Telegraph, off 1 to 51; DuPont, down 1 1/8 to 47 1/8; Caterpillar, down 1 to 53 5/8, and Philip Morris, off 5/8 to 77 1/8.
* Chambers Development Class A shares, traded on the American Stock Exchange, rose 1 1/4 to 6 7/8. The company said it had been granted a permit for a solid waste sanitary landfill in Harrison County, Ohio.
* Bank stocks, one of the best performing groups of 1992, ended mixed. Citicorp, which traded as low as 8 1/2 at the bottom for bank stocks in 1991, rose 5/8 to 22 1/4, touching 2 1/2-year highs.
But BankAmerica slipped 5/8 to 46 1/2; Chase Manhattan lost 1/2 to 28 1/2, and Chemical Banking fell 1/8 to 38 5/8. J.P. Morgan, a component of the Dow, was up 1/8 to 65 3/4.
* Gold mining stocks, by contrast, moved up a bit at the end of a year in which they ranked among the most notable losers. Newmont Gold rose 3/4 to 32 3/8; Homestake Mining gained 1/8 to 11, and ASA Ltd. added 1/4 to 31 7/8. Battle Mountain Gold was unchanged at 5 1/8.
* Among the day’s NASDAQ volume leaders, some technology stocks gave ground. Novell dropped 3/8 to 28 1/2; Microsoft lost 1/2 to 85 3/8, and Intel declined 1 to 87.
* Molecular Biosystems surged 2 1/2 to 20 7/8 after announcing that it had met the Food and Drug Administration’s request for additional information regarding its ultrasound imaging agent, Albunex.
In overseas trading, London’s Financial Times-100 index closed up 14.0 points to 2,846.5, compared to the record close on Tuesday of 2,847.80. For the year the index was up 14.2%.
Markets in Frankfurt and Tokyo were closed Thursday.
Credit
The yield on the Treasury’s 30-year bond inched up to 7.39% from 7.37% Wednesday, closing the year almost exactly at its 7.40% level at year-end 1991.
Trading was quiet, as had been expected.
Shorter-term yields also rose. The discount rate on three-month T-bills finished at 3.08%, up from 3.06% on Wednesday but still far below the 3.85% rate of a year ago, before the Federal Reserve exerted more downward pressure on interest rates to help the economy.
The federal funds rate, the interest on overnight loans between banks, was 3%, up from 2% late Wednesday.
Other Markets
The dollar bade farewell to 1992 on a firmer note, helped by widespread expectations of a solid rally in the new year.
Trading was extremely thin, and most dealers had evacuated their desks by early afternoon.
In New York, the dollar parked at 1.621 German marks, up from 1.616 marks late Wednesday and well above the 1.520 marks of one year ago.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar settled at 124.85, up from 124.60 Wednesday and virtually unchanged from 124.80 a year ago.
Gold prices were unchanged from Wednesday on New York’s Commodity Exchange. Bullion for current delivery settled at $332.80 an ounce. That was down 6% from $354.10 a year ago.
Silver finished at $3.68, up fractionally on the day, and down 5.2% from $3.88 a year ago.
Oil prices settled little changed in an abbreviated session. Light, sweet crude oil for delivery in February settled at $19.50 per barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 9 cents. A year ago oil was at $19.12 a barrel.
Grain and livestock futures rallied as frigid conditions in the Great Plains and dry weather in agricultural areas of South America combined to drive up prices.
Market Roundup, D4
